


This Is How Mistakes Are Made

by Beaconhillsandbts



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1940s Bucky, 1940s everything actually, Drinking, Drunk Bucky Barnes, Drunk Sex, F/M, Friendship, Porn With Plot, Probably too much plot, Sex, Sexual Content, Smut, a lot of drinking, aggressive slurring, and not enough porn, bucky calls people 'doll', bucky is banter, bucky loves to bitch about people, eliza lives with peggy spoiler, everyones drunk and its fantastic, hangovers, im writing about eliza again, its a mess, its set in the 1940s, pre hydra bucky was a bitchy slut and we all know it, there are cocktail umbrellas, vague regrets, yes theres smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 12:34:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6956656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beaconhillsandbts/pseuds/Beaconhillsandbts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky goes out with a childhood friend for drinks, they get wasted, sleep together and regret it the next day.<br/>I'm basically in love with the idea that ww2 bucky was a lil gossip and totally had a girl he would just sit and bitch with. And maybe sometimes sleep with too. on accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is How Mistakes Are Made

**Author's Note:**

> I did see this on tumblr as a prompt for someone else but essentially i love the idea and decided to write it myself because why not.  
> Bucky loves to bitch about everyone.  
> Bucky is a lil shit.  
> Theres an obscene number of cocktail umbrellas in this fic.  
> Enjoy :)

Bucky Barnes had known Eliza Stoddard for as many years as he could walk. Along with Steve, she was part if the two person family he'd made for himself which had started with their mothers meeting in pregnancy group. She'd always been a part of his and Steve's lives, whether that be for play dates or later on in life. She was Steve's first kiss because she was the only girl he'd trusted not to tell Bucky if he was terrible or not. When Bucky had tried to tease it out of her she said she wouldn't know, because of course if was her first kiss too.  
Everyone needs a friend like that. Obviously, Steve was Bucky's best friend, but Eliza was safe. She was separate from his job and wasn't a part of any packs of girls like the women he so frequently entertained. He never had to explain himself to her. She was just a little bit of familiarity that was becoming rare in the buzz of 1940's New York.  
They'd made a fantastic reputation for themselves over the years, traipsing from bar to bar and generally bitching about everyone they knew. If you were out past midnight on a Saturday, chances are you'd hear them crowing with laughter before you saw them walking, bleary eyed, their arms linked, along the sidewalk. Steve had never understood that people who gossip together, stay together; and even though they relished other peoples secrets, there was no doubt in Bucky's mind that he could tell Eliza anything and she'd take it to her grave. The two would meet up around twice a month, to drink and catch up on each other's drama.

\-----

Eliza worked as a secretary for some big office uptown, and Bucky had called the telephone there because Eliza's landlady had a tendency to hang up on any male consorts the women living there may have. He charmed the operator and she'd eventually put him through, despite some general rule he didnt care for about not contacting a specific wire from a larger company.

Eliza answers after a few moments with an unusually smiley tone which Bucky knew she must be using ironically. "Hello! This is Elizabeth at Stark Industries, New York Office. I'd be happy to help you today!"

Bucky choked on a laugh, "Hey, doll."

"Oh its you." She replied, her natural skepticism creeping back into her voice again, "What do you want?"

Bucky rolled his eyes before replying. "Tough day?"

Eliza sighed, "I'm going to bore myself senseless here, Buck, honestly." A beat. "I hope you're not calling to cancel on me. I need something interesting to happen today."

"No- we're still on, dont worry," Bucky assured her. He suggests that, instead of meeting at their usual place, they catch a show he'd heard about, a cabaret style thing. Eliza laughs and tells him maybe because she wants at least an hour with him while he's thinking with his upstairs brain. The two talk for a while longer, mainly so Eliza doesn't have to answer any more calls from people who only talk about how Howard Stark is a genius.

Bucky can hear the exasperation in her voice. "And I have to just sit and listen to it!" She says, "They're obsessed!"

Eventually, and after some speculation on which girls have likely slept with the infamous Mr Stark, Eliza has to go because her boss is about to catch her.  
She signs off with a sunny, and deeply sarcastic, "Thank you for calling, Sir. We hope to hear from you again!" And Bucky barely has time to squeeze out a quick "See you later" before she's hung up.

\-----

That night Bucky arrived a quarter of an hour early and collared their usual table at the classiest dive bar in New York. He ordered himself a whisky and a vodka tonic for Liza as he saw her approach in the corner of his eye. "For the lady." He added, to the bartender, knowing it would grind on her nerves when she heard him say it. She thumped his arm not at all playfully and scowled when the bartender passed them their drinks. Bucky took a swig of his and then snorted into his glass when he saw Eliza's had come adorned with a tiny orange umbrella.

"You're a bloody menace." She growled, as they take their drinks and head toward their table while Bucky joked about taking her coat and pulled out her chair. Then they exchanged the pleasantries one usually begins a conversation with and before long Bucky had begun to whinge enthusiastically about how all of a sudden women are only interested in soldiers.

"-They wont even dance with me anymore! You know, there was a time when girls would respect a charming man for what he was." He gestures to nothing with his glass, "But charming's just not enough anymore. Now- I can't even get a fucking date. I'm becoming Steve!" Laughing, he takes the last gulp of his whiskey and sighs as he sets his glass down.

Eliza makes a noise of agreement, "Tell me about it. Its all guys seem to talk about now I can barely stand to have a conversation with them." She absently twists the umbrella between her fingers as she imitates. "'Look at me, Im a Sargent!'- Like, gee whizz! Men like that are so dull." Bucky nods and they sit there and let their mutual dislike sit in the air for a while.

"You've got to admit tho Liz," Bucky muses after a comfortable pause, "Sargent Barnes... Sounds pretty handsome doesn't it?"

Eliza laughs, "It might be," she replies, "To someone who never saw how chubby you were as a kid." She takes a sip of her drink innocently, clearly pleased with herself.

Bucky laughs and holds his hands up in surrender, "Have a little mercy, doll, some of us were late bloomers." With this, he rises, and grabs his glass. "Another round?"

Eliza nods and Bucky smiles as he hears her mumble a threat about more umbrellas. He asks the barman for two this time, "Pink, preferably." he says, "You know how girls are sometimes. Fussy, fussy, fussy."  
The barman gives him a doubtful look but doesn't object.

When he slides Liza her drink, her reaction is simply a sigh and an "Are you going to be a jerk about this all night?"

Bucky grins unapologetically, "Absolutely I am."

\-----

It was not unusual for the two of them to just sit in their corner and get progressively drunker and drunker as the night goes on. It's become the basis for their friendship, and its why they always nab the table in the corner of the bar. They don't usually, however, start and continue drinking hard liquor from six o'clock onward without going out for food first.

By 11 there are two dozen paper umbrellas of varying colours scattered across the table. Although Bucky had asked the bartender to double the amount of umbrellas each time he ordered, he'd been given no more than two or three per drink. Not that he had even noticed, he was already seeing double by then anyway.

The two of them had moved closer together, possibly due to their drunken lack of spatial awareness. Eliza was leaning back against Bucks shoulder, and they were talking at full volume in each other's faces.  
Eliza took an unladylike slurp from her glass and set it down shakily and then, as if she realised something, began frantically poking Bucky in the chest. Roused from a drunken stupor, Bucky looked at Liza. "Wha'isit?" He slurred, and Liza continues to prod at him. He doesn't mind, not at all, and he waits as she gulps the last of his drink down before she says anything. The line between whisky and vodka began to blur around 10 when they'd started to use the umbrellas to make something, he cant remember what exactly, or why, but it was funny at the time.

"Stevie- how is liddle Steve hm??" Eliza gushes, her face scrunching up with the strain of getting the words out.

He replies immediately. "Steve's.... Steve- is small. An' he wan'sto join The Army still. But he's too 'lil. Liddle. Small." Bucky stumbles over his words. "He's-"

"He's ver' pretty. Have you notice' tha'?" Eliza interrupts loudly. Bucky gets the sense that she was barely listening to his answer. "Pretty like- a girl."

Bucky snorts,"Hey, heeeeey! Notas pretty as me!" He gives Liza a lazy nudge, and she turns around clumsily.

"No- you're han'som too- don't worry about tha'!" She slurs, her eyes only half focussed, and she plants an urgent kiss on Bucky's jawline. Bucky assumes immediately that that kiss was meant for his forehead, she just couldn't reach, and they both seem to accept it.

Bucky watches for a few moments as Eliza absently spins a green umbrella. She does this for a while, before whispering, "Buck?"

"Yea?" He replies.

"Bucky?" She whispers again, slapping the umbrella down and using the table to help spin her around again. He waits while Liza takes her time testing her chin on his shoulder before continuing. "Am I pretty?" She asks, shy.

Bucky smiles. "Beaudiful." And his kiss lands on her cheek, and he sees Liza accept it because that's as far as he could reach too. Bucky realises he never meant for it to land on her forehead anyway, and sticks a purple umbrella in her hair.

\-----

They get kicked out of the bar at half past one because they were making loud comments about everyone that walked past. Bucky had catcalled the same woman half a dozen times without realising; and then tried to get in a bar fight he was barely able to get up to start. Eliza had urged him on to begin with but then got distracted by the music that was playing and nearly fell into the table who were drinking beside them. After that, the bartender had had enough, and had sent an assistant out to hail a cab for them.

While they waited, they rambled about nothing much and stole the cocktail umbrellas one by one, sliding each into Eliza's purse whilst frantically looking around to make sure no one had seen them. Bucky thought it was incredibly funny that the man at the bar had caught them as they took the third umbrella, and was looking at them in disappointment, but Eliza still thought they were getting away with it. She kept shushing him angrily when he couldn't control his laughs.

The assistant comes in after a minute and escorts them to their cab. They're wobbly, and standing up seems to have made everything worse. Bucky watches dreamily as Eliza clambers into the taxi head first, and hears her slur Bucky's own address to the driver.

"B'you live closer." Bucky says, not sure if he was asking a question or not.

Eliza frowns sleepily, and takes a heavy breath. "I can'ot go back like this-" She closes her eyes. "Lan'lady'll throw me out."

Bucky doesn't question further. "Your lan'ladys a jerk." He says eloquently, and reaches out to push Liza before she falls asleep.

It took a long time for Bucky to get into his apartment that night. He was all thumbs and the keys were really small and he was very distracted because Liza was getting through the tired phase of drunkenness and had perked up again. She's babbling loudly about fresh air and rivers and then about the war and then about jazz music. Her enthusiasm has worn off on Bucky, it seems, and when they get into his living room, he decides there's time for one more drink before bed.

"The'night is still young!" He grins, and pours two half glasses of the gin he keeps on reserve for emergencies. 

Eliza laughs as he passes her the tumbler, but accepts it heartily. Between the darkness of his apartment and the fuzziness of his eyes, he barely recognises her as her. "This-" she says, somewhere in Bucky's head he hears her say it. "This- is'how misdakes are made!" She laughs, and Bucky has heard it a dozens of times before but in the haze it sounds different. This girl he has grown up with, Eliza Stoddard, who he has always known and loved- has suddenly become a woman, all grown and curvy and attractive and in his apartment.

Bucky has barely registers his own speech before he's responded with a cheeky, "Then what're'we waitin for?"

There's a moment of silence between the two, but only a moment, before Eliza is up and they collide like a messy traffic accident. It is not perfect, or even neat. Bucky's hands are in her hair and on her face and undoing her dress and tugging her to him. He feels her moan and slide her hands around his neck and pull at his shirt. She is pressed against him, Bucky's arms hugging around the small of her back. Their kissing is urgent and directionless and deep, their tongues exploring the unfamiliarity. Her eyes are squeezed shut as they break away from each other only long enough for Eliza to remind Bucky where his bedroom is, because he stopped caring where they were a long time ago.

They stumble onto the bed, Eliza crying out for help with her dress. Bucky tries to help but is too busy with the buttons on his shirt, and his trousers. Eventually, he untangles himself from his shirt enough to prize her from her blue dress and throw it across the room. Eliza flops next to him in victory and quickly straddles Bucky, joining their mouths again. Its demanding and excited and sloppily, and Bucky unclips Eliza's bra hastily until finally there was no material between their chests.

Suddenly, Eliza sits up, leaving Bucky panting and rejected. He gives her a questioning look, and she manages to slur, "Barnes, were you tryina get me drunk?"

Bucky, who was still dazed from the sudden lack of Eliza pressed against him, shrugs. "Hones'ly doll?" She nods "I don' know."

He props himself up on his elbows, squeezing his eyes closed and trying to control the reaction his body had to the friction the movement caused. He really does have no idea, most of the night is already disappearing from his memory.

Eliza gets comfy in Bucky's lap and bites her lip in a way that makes him want her as though he'd never wanted anyone else. He sits upright and starts laying kisses on her collarbone, and nips whenever he gets a reaction, testing. Somewhere in his exploration he finds a place that elicits a beautiful reaction, and he hovers there, feeling Liza shudder in his arms. "Wha'dya wanna do about this?" She gasps.

Bucky barely breaks away from that spot, but smiles into her bare skin. "I thou't that was pretty obvious" He breaths across her neck, it drives her crazy. "Wha'do you wanna do about this?" He asks her, tracing her spine cheekily with his fingers in a way he's sure makes it an unfair fight.

Eliza wiggles under his touch, pressing herself into something Bucky was going to have to deal with one way or another. She's breathless when she replies. "Hones'ly?"

"Yea."

"I think I wan' you t'take advantage of me, Bucky." She pants, looking down at Barnes with a look in her eye hes never seen in Liza's eyes before, but recognizes from the other women he had been with. He grins menacingly, and she puts a stop to it by grinding over his erection. He's immediately flat against the bed again, and he feels the way Eliza's drunken fingers are fumbling with the buttons in his trousers all too much, and he lets out a soft moan. Now Eliza grins, and Bucky knows he's at her mercy, for now anyway.

As soon as Bucky is free, he's up, taking Liza with him and flipping her onto her back. He strips himself quickly, watching her do the same, waiting for him on the bed, and it takes him more than a second to remember protection. Bucky scurries in his bedside draw and hears Eliza give out an impatient moan. He looks back for a moment and their blurry eyes lock, and she bites her lip and pleads with him. Bucky is dumbstruck in that moment, watching the way her back arched without him even touching her. The anticipation was killing them.

"C'mon James!" She breathed, and Bucky never wanted to hear anyone but Liza say his name again. He slid on a condom as quickly as he could and clambered on top of her again, feeling her soft skin against his again.

"Tell me you want it." He says, clawing his fingers down the small of her back. He's desperate, but he's a tease, and he loves the way she sounds when she needs him.

"Please Buck," she hisses, "Get on with it." She frowns when nothing happens. He only grins at her in response. Her breath catches as his hands reach the tops of her thighs. "James please, c'mon," Eliza looks up at him with distant eyes. "I want you- I need you - jus'do it please!"

A grin spreads eagerly over Bucky's face, "Yes Ma'am," He responds. He shudders as he entered her, bringing their lips together again as Liza lets out a moan.

\-----

Over the years, Bucky had grown all too familiar with terrible hangovers. But even as a connoisseur, this must have been one of his worst. His brain wasn't even hurting, he was just so aware of it, and it seemed to be bobbing up and down ceaselessly even though he knew he wasn't moving.

He kept his eyes squeezed shut as he started to sit up. Bucky hadn't registered until he shifted, but limbs were splayed in surprising directions, and he felt the usual creaking ache as he rolled his shoulders.

When the initial light-headedness of movement had warn off, he trusted himself to open his eyes. Bucky was glad to find himself in his room. He doesn't remember much of what happened the night before, but is pleased he made it back to his apartment in one piece. He's more than used to waking up in unfamiliar places, usually beds, but once in an alley. Bucky had an unhealthy habit of starting fights when he was drunk, and he's sure he got it from Steve. He was a better fighter than his counterpart, but he tends to overestimate his abilities after a few spirits, and he'd once woken up behind a dive bar with a concussion as well as a hangover.

Bucky's more surprised at himself when he sees a purple dress strewn messily across the floor alongside his trousers. He sighs and taps his fingertips to his forehead. "Why?" He whispers. There's a definite rule if his that he has clearly broken. 'Never bring a woman back to the apartment' things just get, well, awkward. He'd much rather sneak out before they even wake up, leave them to get on with their lives, instead of giving them ideas about things that weren't ever going to happen. He'd tried that stuff a few times before, it just wasn't his style. Now he'd have to disappoint the poor girl.

He twisted slowly, seeing that the mystery dame wasn't in bed beside him, he pulled on some underwear and the same pants as the night before, and strode out into the apartment. He squints, closes his blinds against the light, and notices noises coming from his bathroom. He wanders over quietly and knocks on the door.

"Uh, hey darlin', um-" Bucky leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. The girl is clearly having some sort of issue in there, god knows what. "Yesterday was swell but uh, I dont think we should keep doin-" He's cut off by a small voice.

"Bucky?" It asks. He recognises it immediately, and some nasty pieces start to fall into place.

"Liza?" He asks. He knew he'd started the night with his friend, but they'd very often go dancing and go home with other people. A couple of times she'd even pointed out women she knew he'd like, but she'd never stayed over before.

"Bucky," he hears her say, "I feel so crap right now."

Bucky twisted the door handle and stepped inside. Eliza was draped over the toilet bowl, white as anything and wearing little more than her underwear. He chuckles lightly, "Holy cow, Liz, you're a mess."

She'd likely been there several hours, and Bucky feels as if he's dodged a bullet. Both with the fact that his hangover hasn't left him hugging a lav, but also because he doesn't think anything regrettable could have happened the night before. He had probably just been too wasted to realise the gentlemanly thing would have been to sleep on the couch, and they'd just holed up together. Naked. Or possibly not. His memories were very patchy.

He felt Eliza glance up at him groggily as he rested his head against the doorframe again.

"I don't remember much past umbrella number 8." She admits, and laughs. "I hate you for that, I just thought you should know. Expect me to get revenge." 

There's a pause when Bucky doesn't respond. He just looks across at her, and after a long moment says, "I think we might've made a big mistake last night."

Eliza punctuates this statement by violently dry heaving into the toilet, and by the time she's finished, Bucky is sat on the tiles by her side, dubbing her back. She leans back against the wall and rests her throbbing head on Bucky's bare shoulder.

They're both staring off into space in silence, thinking, before Liza says quietly, "Did we- y'know? Do you think-?"

"I think so darlin'," Bucky replies, "like fuckin' rabbits."

There's another pause. "Oh dear." Is all Eliza can respond with.

Bucky snorts, and it turns into a strained laugh. Before long, the two of them are in hysterics on Bucky's bathroom floor, because they know they're never going to speak of this again.

**Author's Note:**

> Lord this was my first even vaguely smutty thing and idek if its any good i just liked the plot  
> (who am i?)


End file.
